Before You Get Into Music

Over the last seven years of building my career, I’ve learned a lot, not just about production or mixing, but about how people actually grow as artists. 🎧

And one thing I’ve realized is that music is a very unique skill to learn. Most of us don’t start making music because we want to “learn” something. We start because we want to express something.

That’s what makes it tricky.

When you sit down to write your first lyrics or make your first beat, you’re not thinking about technique or theory, you’re thinking about how to capture what’s in your head and heart right now.

You want it to sound real.

But if you want your self-expression to also be good, you quickly discover that it takes way more than passion. It takes patience, time, and hundreds of repetitions.

Making music - whether it’s writing, producing or recording - is art, yes, but it’s also a craft. ⚒️

And like any other craft, it only starts to feel natural once you’ve done it enough times for your hands, ears and brain to actually catch up with your ideas.

So before we dive into the five things I wish I knew at the beginning, I want you to keep one thought in the back of your mind: making music can be brutally hard at first, but if you don’t give up, if you stay patient, if you show up again and again… it will start to click. I saw that too many times.

But, let's dive in. 🤿

Patience Is Everything

If there’s one thing I wish someone had drilled into my head before I started making music, it’s this: nothing good happens fast.

When you’re just starting out, it’s easy to believe that talent alone will carry you, that if you sit down and give it everything for a few weeks, something magical will happen.

And sometimes it does, but for most of us, the first songs we make won’t be great. They might not even be good.

And that’s not failure, that’s just how it works. 📈

With music you can't memorize a formula and get it right every time.

It’s more like learning a new language from scratch, at first you can barely say anything, then you start putting together short sentences, and eventually you speak fluently without thinking. 🎧

Some people hit that stage faster, especially if they’ve played an instrument before or grew up around music.

For others, it can take months, sometimes even a year or two before things start to “click.”

And that’s okay. That's normal.

What matters is staying long enough in the game to get through that rough early stage, the part where your taste is way ahead of your skills, where you hear how far you are from what’s in your head.

If you can survive that part without quitting, everything else gets easier.

So if you’ve been making music for a few weeks or months and it still feels like nothing works, that doesn’t mean you’re not meant for it.

It just means you’re still in the part everyone has to go through. 🤝

Your Ear Is a Muscle

This one is tricky to explain, because hearing is so subjective, but it’s also one of the most important things you need to understand early on.

Your ear needs training. It needs time to actually learn how to hear. 👂

In the beginning, music will feel like one big soup.

Your tracks will blur together, everything will sound kind of flat, and it’ll be hard to tell what’s missing or what’s clashing.

And that’s normal.

Everyone goes through that phase.

But over time, something starts to change.

You'll listen to your favourite tracks and you’ll catch yourself noticing tiny details you never heard before. like a soft trumpet buried in the background, or a subtle piano tucked behind the vocals.

And that’s a huge moment. 

Because once you start noticing those things in other people’s songs, you can start borrowing ideas and applying them to your own. 🎹

One of the best ways to speed this up is what I call analytical listening.

Put on headphones, grab a notebook, and listen to your favorite track, not just as a fan, but like you’re trying to reverse-engineer it. Write down everything you hear: drums, bass, melodies, little background textures, effects.

At first, you’ll miss a lot.

But on your second, third, or tenth listen, you’ll start hearing more and more layers.

And once you understand what your favorite songs are actually built from, you’ll know how to build something like that yourself.

That’s how your ears learn, through time, repetition, and curiosity. 🌱

And the better your ear gets, the faster you’ll recognize bad samples before using them, or figure out why a mix feels off and what to change.

Your ear is your compass, and like any muscle, it only gets stronger the more you use it.

Skills Come From Repetition

One of the biggest mindset shifts that helped me grow as an artist was realizing that making music isn’t just about inspiration, it’s also about repetition. 🔁

We love to romanticize music as pure emotion, a spark of creativity, something that just “hits” out of nowhere.

And sure, those moments happen. but they’re rare.

Most of the time, music is simply a craft. 🔨

Just like a painter learns to control their brush or a chef learns to balance flavors, a musician has to build technical skills.

And skills don’t come from talent alone, they come from showing up, making things, and doing it again and again until it becomes natural.

In the early days, you’ll probably spend hours on a beat or a vocal take only to realize it’s not what you imagined.

That’s part of the process.

Those “failed” projects aren’t failures. they’re reps.

They’re you laying bricks, one by one, building the foundation for the artist you want to become.

And the only way to fully express yourself through music is to first gain the technical ability to translate what’s in your heart into sound. 🖤 -> 🎶

That doesn’t happen in a weekend. It happens through hundreds of small, imperfect attempts.

So treat music like a craft. 

Experiment, mess up, learn, repeat. Every track you finish - even if no one ever hears it - is one more step forward, one more rep added to the stack. 💪

With enough of those reps, the technical part becomes second nature, and that’s when the art can finally flow freely. 

Quantity First, Then Quality

In the beginning, you have to let go of perfection.

That’s one of the hardest lessons for new artists, and also one of the most freeing.

When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to pour all your energy into making one “perfect” song, polishing it endlessly until it feels worthy of showing the world.

But you need to understand that your first few tracks are not supposed to be perfect.

They’re supposed to teach you. 🎓

Think of it like going to the gym.

You wouldn’t walk in on day one expecting to lift 100kg (220lbs) - you just show up, do the reps, and trust that strength will come later.

It’s the same with music. 

At the start, it’s way more important to focus on getting reps in.

The more you create, the faster you build instinct and muscle. 💪

Every beat you make, every verse you write, every vocal take you record - even if it’s messy - sharpens your skills a little more.

And as your skills grow from repetition, quality starts to rise on its own.

Suddenly your tenth track sounds better than your first without you even trying harder, because now you know what you’re doing, and your ear and hands have caught up to your ideas.

So early on, don’t obsess over making “masterpieces.”

Just keep finishing things.

Let them be messy, let them be imperfect, because every one of them is getting you closer to the point where quality becomes your default.

Consistency Beats Motivation

If there’s one thing that quietly separates artists who make it from those who disappear after a few months, it’s not talent, it’s consistency. 🎯

Motivation comes and goes.

One day you’re overflowing with ideas, recording all night, planning your next releases… and the next, you can barely open your DAW.

And that’s normal. Nobody feels inspired every single day. 

But consistency builds momentum.

It teaches your brain and your body that making music is just part of your life now, like brushing your teeth.

And once it becomes a habit, you don’t have to fight yourself into starting every time.

That doesn’t mean you have to work 12 hours a day.

It just means creating regularly, even in small doses: one hour after school, one verse before bed, one loop every morning with your coffee. Those tiny sessions add up faster than you think. 🧱

Motivation will get you started, but consistency will carry you through the days when motivation disappears, and those are the days that shape you the most.

If you can keep going through the quiet days, you’ll eventually look back and realize you’ve built something real.

Bonus: My Most Important Lesson

I have to admit, at the very beginning, before I started trusting my own instincts, I was learning everything from the internet. 🌐

I taught myself production from scratch, watching endless tutorials, reading advice from people online who claimed to know how often you should make music, how much you should make, how to build discipline.

And I have to be honest… some of that advice pushed me straight into burnout.

It also damaged my relationship with music.

I’ve always been the kind of person who, when I decide to commit to something, I go all in and don’t really think about the consequences.

Back then, I wasn’t listening to my own instincts or my heart, I just forced myself to make music every single day, right after work, without even giving myself a moment to breathe.

I’d come home exhausted, skip rest, and jump straight into creating, because that’s what all the “gurus” online said you had to do.

And over time… I started to hate it. 💔

I hated that I wasn’t giving myself space to be creative.
I hated that something I once loved started feeling like a chore.
I hated that I wasn’t making music the way I wanted to - the way it should be made - but instead the way some strangers on the internet told me I “had to” do it.

Yes, consistency matters. Yes, quantity and quality matter.

But it’s just like starting a new hobby, or going to the gym. (for a lack of better comparison)

I go to the gym twice a week. Some weeks I only make it once, because life happens, but the next week I’m back to two sessions again.

And every morning, I try to go on a 20-minute walk. But if I wake up and I’m not feeling it, or if yesterday I walked 20,000 steps and today I just want to chill in my pajamas and play PlayStation 5, then that’s what I’ll do. 

I’ll skip the walk, and tomorrow I’ll be back to it like normal. 🚶

And that’s exactly how I’ve learned to approach music.

Because building a healthy relationship with your art matters more than following generic internet advice that says “make music every single day no matter what.”

If you can, great. Be consistent.

But if you need two days off… or a week… take the break.

Those breaks are part of the process.

They give you space to rest, to reset your perspective, and to reflect on what you’ve made.

Without breaks, there’s no growth.

So be consistent, but also listen to yourself. 🖤

Because your intuition will take you way further than any internet checklist ever could. 

Wrapping It Up

Starting out in music can be overwhelming.

You open your DAW, you try to make something real, and suddenly you’re buried in doubts, wondering if you’re good enough, if it’s even worth it, if you’re just wasting your time.

And that’s normal. Everyone goes through that stage.

What matters is understanding that music takes time, and it takes patience. Your ear will grow slower than you want it to, your skills will lag behind your taste, and your early work won’t reflect the vision you have in your head, but that’s how it’s supposed to be.

If you stay patient, keep experimenting, and give yourself the grace to take breaks when you need them, you’ll go further than you can imagine right now.

Not because you forced yourself to, but because you built something real, one step at a time.

I hope this helped, I just wanted to share something real from the heart today. 

And if you are just starting out with music, I have some tools that might help you out.

Take care,

Baxon 👊